A Life for a Life
A short story about meeting Death
I wrote this story for ‘Elegant Literature’ Magazine. The prompt was ‘Dear Death’, and the key word, which had to be included in some form, was 'star'. It was rejected, and I'm OK with that. I've had a pretty good start in the world of short story writing, after all. The first story I submitted got an Honourable Mention and I received $20 for it. The second one was accepted and is appearing in the next issue of ‘Indie Bites’ Magazine, which I am so excited about! ‘A Life for a Life’ was my third submission.
Rhys has been surrounded by death all his life. His parents ran an undertaker's in the Welsh town where he grew up. Later, he studied archaeology, eventually becoming an osteoarchaeologist: a bone man. With the deceased being his trade, he had been liberal with the use of the word: That moment marked the death of a civilisation, he’d say. We were freezing to death on that dig. This commute will be the death of me.
Rhys hadn't thought much about his own death. It was a far-off event; one he wouldn’t even notice, he hoped, assuming like most people that he would die in his sleep some time after his 90th birthday. But he had only been 46 when he had had the stroke. And here he is now, present at his own death, and very much awake.
Rhys has been lying in this bed for an indeterminate amount of time. It could be days or weeks - he isn’t sure. Maybe it is only hours. He can’t ask, because he can no longer muster the energy to speak. How had he climbed mountains? Done workouts at the gym? Lugged equipment in and out of trenches? He can't even open his eyes now - the effort it would take to part his eyelids is unthinkable.
But he knows his wife’s head on his chest, his 16-year-old son’s hand is closed around his own. He had wanted to see Alwyn finish school, help him renovate his first home, see him have kids of his own - kids that would have called Rhys Granddad. And what about Siân? She’s sitting on the hospital bed right now, one leg curled under her. She’s only 14 - not old enough to drive, to drink, to go clubbing; not old enough to lose a parent. What would she have looked like in a cape and mortar board at graduation? In a wedding dress? He’ll never know. Never know if she’ll even get married, and to whom, or what career she’ll have, the woman she’ll become.
He isn’t angry, though. He stopped asking Why me? the moment he realised the answer was Why not? Better him than his wife, than one of his kids. Rhys doesn’t like playing the martyr card - his mother was like that and it always irked him. But in this case, he thinks it’s justified. The untimeliness of his death has to have some meaning. A life for a life, or something like that.
Something shifts in the room. Maybe the lights flicker, or the curtains flutter in a phantom breeze. Rhys doesn’t know - he still hasn’t opened his eyes - but all at once he can see it sitting there at the end of his hospital bed, even through his closed eyelids: his Death. Rhys supposes it is his mind trying to personify a concept, or perhaps it’s the drugs. But it looks real. She looks real.
Her hair is a shimmering curtain of silver, her eyes black, but not like the empty sockets of a skull; they are the blackness between stars - infinite. There is everything in them, and forever, and he knows that's where she is taking him. Tears leak from the corners of his own eyes. It's not that he doesn't want to go with her - it's just too soon. However much he had complained about this life, he still wants more of it.
Siân is transfixed by the figure sitting on the end of the bed. It isn't the first Death she has seen. Her grandmother's Death was a warrior in armour, tall with flowing black hair, but the eyes were the same.
Siân knows no one else can see her father's Death, sitting there with her silver hair spilling onto the bedclothes. Nevertheless, she almost says something. Could she beg for her dadi’s life? Bargain for it? But her father's Death seems to know what she is thinking, because she places a finger to her lips and shakes her head. Shhh.
She reaches for Siân’s dadi, leaning forward, her shoulder almost touching Siân’s. Her hand comes to rest lightly on his chest. She doesn’t seem to exert any pressure, but Rhys stops breathing - it was becoming too much of an effort anyway. There is a long moment of nothingness, and then Rhys is outside himself.
Siân watches her father’s Death leave the room with the only part of her dadi that really mattered. She gets up and follows her out of the room, her mami’s racking sobs fading away as they walk down the strip-lit corridor. Somehow, Siân hadn’t imagined Death leaving by the main entrance. She thought they’d be a portal, opening onto the astral plane, but they go through swing door after swing door until her father’s Death turns to face her in a deserted corridor.
“It’s usually non-negotiable,” she tells Siân without moving her lips.
Siân says nothing, only stands there and holds Death’s eternal gaze. She tells her, silently, all the reasons why.
At length, her father’s Death shrugs, and the cable which Siân is leaning against - the one which until now was insulated and compliant with all safety regulations - sends a lethal jolt of electricity through her body.
The doctor has just arrived to call time of death when Rhys sucks in a huge gulp of air. The nurse jumps, Rhys’ wife screams, and his son swears, but Rhys can only say one word, over and over again. “Siân!” he gasps in a voice hoarse from disuse. “Siân! Siân!”
Siân’s Death is a boy - handsome, with a shock of black hair and endless eyes. She looks up at him from the floor. Her whole arm is burnt and blistered, but she cannot feel a thing.
“I’m ready,” she tells him, and he holds out his hand.
Well written Katharine! Two stories (of 2 different people) into one! Keep it up!❤️👏